[mikevp]

Tom Wolfe's old book "From Bauhaus to Our House" took on some of these issues. In particular, modern architecture's alleged "form follows function" taking some bizarrely twisted thought processes to end up building flat-topped buildings in climates with large snowfall. Seriously? What were they thinking?

[romwell]

Yup. Here's my brief list of the "what the heck is the function that this form follows" in modern architecture :

-Light management: humans need light - so, naturally, modern concrete slabs dispense with windows. Solid wall, here we go! Enjoy your fluorescent flickers. Skylights? A thing of the past.

-Air and climate: humans need air to breath, and exhibit varying preferences for temperature. So, again, no windows! Heavens forbid someone would open one. If there are windows, they should be glass panes that can't be opened. And the AC should be centrally controlled, because there's only One True AC Setting. But only use single-pane glass, lest one thinks that costs were a concern.

-Rain. Rain! Humans, on some occasions, prefer not to get wet in the rain. And outside of Seattle, people have been known to carry umbrellas for that purpose. Naturally, a modern building must not allow anyone with an umbrella in. Make a door narrow and hard to open, and no overhangs! Make sure one gets wet while folding the umbrella in front of the door. Bonus points for making the ground floor subterranean, ensuring the biannual building flood. (You already covered that the roof must be flat-topped to accumulate snow and be more prone to leaks.)

-On the subject of doors, make the main entrance in the back. Dispense with side entrances. Nothing should deface the monolith of the facade. You should arrive by car anyway, and walk the desolate parking lot. The building is not to be accessed from the street. Bonus points for employing electronic locks to create exit-only doorways (apparent only after you try to get back).

-It is the woe of many architects that people desire to get to floors of the building other than the ground floor. Give them a dilemma: wait for a cramped elevator, or walk the staircase that looks like it's something the maintenance crew forgot to lock down. No natural light either way, even though people have invented glass millenia ago. And make the steps on the staircase as tall as possible to make the walk tiring and unpleasant. Spiral staircases - a taboo.

-People might try to navigate the building by memory. So make the layout labyrinthine, but without any visually distinguishing elements. Every corner should look the same. Bonus points for room numbering schemes that seem to have taken a cue from the Mad Hatter.

-Did I mention doors? The more doors, the better. Humans like figuring out which ones are unlocked by trial and error.

-It is quite unfortunate that the pure architecture has to abide to such whims of human physiology as the need to use the toilet. So make them hard to find. Bonus points for having men and women toilets on different floors, just for the kicks.

-Sometimes people talk to each other. Ensure there is no comfortable space for them to do that. Corridors will do just fine (remember, no natural light in the corridors, or everywhere). No semi-secluded corners - every space must be panopticon-like. Sound insulation is a non-concern.

All this is just from a handful of examples I've had the pleasure of working in, and replicated endlessly. The list goes on.

[mijamo]

Maybe we don't have the same modern architecture ... My experience from Sweden and France:

- Windows are bigger than ever today, at least in Europe. It used to be that windows were not that big to keep warm inside, and because they were expensive to build, nowadays most buildings have super huge windows, and so do houses. They have actually grown so big that you need to find ways to STOP the natural light from the windows.

- Single glass panel? Where do you even live? Old buildings have that, in modern ones you have triple pane glasses, and central AC in big buildings is a necessity. Right now I work in a XV century building and the air is MAGNITUDES worse that what it was in a modern office we had, evne when opening the window, because the air flux is not optimized and there is no AC.

- Doors in old buildings are smaller, they have gotten much bigger due to requirements of accessibility, and you can actually open them with a button now.

- Never seen a main entrance in the back, and modern buildings don't even have parking lots because fuck cars and hurray for public transports

- Elevators are always over dimensioned and not so much a trouble, spiral stairs are still very common

- Likeliness is a real thing, but on the other hand it can be the same in old buildings as well, the thing is that usually they have changed a lot so places are different, but it will be the same with modern buildings with some time. Regarding the room numbering most places I was at had a very logical system and it was independent to the modernity of the building.

- There are much less doors than it used to be, spaces are actually too open now which is annoying for noise. I wish we had more doors in offices. On the other hand in apartments it's very nice, what were people thinking before ?I would say we have maybe half the walls there were 60 years ago, so half the doors. Who needs a freaking hall with doors to go in each room in a 70m2 appartment? Now they are finally opened.

- That has been a problem only in old buildings in my experience because they lack signs. Modern buildings always have really well indicated bathroom, sometimes unisex, with a big logo on the door, not just a random wooden door that could be a kitchen, a meeting room or the bathroom!

- Sound isolation is so much better now. It used to be bad (before 1940), it went horrible (1940-1970) and now it's finally OK.

[romwell]

>Maybe we don't have the same modern architecture ...

Yeah we don't. Welcome to the US.

> Never seen a main entrance in the back, and modern buildings don't even have parking lots because fuck cars and hurray for public transports

(weeps silently)

Also re: sound insulation:

>It used to be bad (before 1940), it went horrible (1940-1970) and now it's finally OK.

My definition of "modern" is, essentially, postwar, so it includes all the monstrosities from the 1950-1970 era. We are doing better now, that's true.